Stupid Vices
by imjustaguy
Summary: BtVSThe Last Starfighter – Faith never figured this vice could cause so much trouble – One Shot Complete


Disclaimer: I don't own either BtVS or The Last Starfighter. Although it would be cool to own a Gunstar.

Spoilers:

BtVS – Post Chosen

The Last Starfighter – AU for the movie

This is a one-shot story. It is stand alone and not connected to my 'A Changed World' universe.

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Stupid Vices …

Faith always figured at least one of her vices would eventually catch up with her. She was honest enough to admit she had quite the collection to choose from.

But of all her various vices this was the last one she had expected to bite her in the ass.

She played video games. She'd been doing it since she was five or six. She'd go to the arcade down the street from the apartment to get away from her mom or her mom's current 'boyfriend' for a while. She got pretty good.

Playing games was one of the few happy memories from her childhood. That was why she kept it to herself.

Faith didn't play that much anymore. As she grew up she found alternative forms of entertainment. And after she became a Slayer most of the games were too easy.

She still hit the occasional arcade. As vices went she figured it was nice and safe.

Stupid.

It was all the fault of that Starfighter game. It was actually a challenge. No else at the arcade could get past the lower levels. It actually took her a week to master the dual controls. Faith played every chance she got.

It took her a little over a month but she finally beat the machine.

That's when things starting going downhill.

The next thing she knew some guy (not human) named Centauri was kidnapping her.

Faith found herself on the planet Rylos.

It turned out the game was actually a test to find Starfighters. Faith had been 'recruited' by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Kodan armada. Faith had to admit as tests went, a video game was probably better than some guy throwing a knife at your head.

So she went from being expected to save the world as a Slayer to being expected to save the galaxy as a Starfighter. She was so going to get the universe for this.

Of course as ticked off as she was, Faith took a certain delight in the shock of her alien 'hosts' when they found out why it was a mistake to try and kidnap a Slayer. Especially when that Slayer had friends, one of whom was the most power witch in the world and another who could open portals.

The sudden arrival of Willow, Buffy, Dawn and about a dozen Slayers itching for a fight surprised the base personnel.

Things picked up from there.

Disembodied head appeared in the control room and started making threats against everyone. From Faith's perspective, typical evil dude rant. Buffy scored it a seven. The actual speech was pretty standard but the floating head thing was good for some serious style points. None of the aliens got the joke.

That was followed by an attack on the base. Attempted sabotage by Xur sympathizer thwarted by previously mentioned powerful witch who managed to reactivate the base's defenses with her magic. Saboteur captured by Buffy and Faith.

After a demonstration by Buffy of how Mr. Pointy worked said saboteur agreed to send false message to Xur saying attack was a complete success and all the Starfighters were dead.

The Kodan were very surprised when they reached Rylos and were suddenly attacked by a full squadron of Gunstars led by Faith flying the new prototype Gunstar with an alien named Grig as her navigator.

Things were bad enough for the Kodan watching their fighters being annihilated. But then Buffy, Dawn, Willow and a couple of Slayers appeared on their bridge. Buffy and the Slayers busily took out the bridge crew rendering Xur unconscious while Willow used her magic to destroy the navigational equipment and set the mothership on a collision course for Rylos' moon right before Dawn opened a portal to take them all back to the planet.

One very big boom later and Xur and the Kodan armada was no more.

That, of course, was followed by a major party, which Faith always appreciated.

Overall the experience wasn't so bad. In exchange for their help the Council got a supply of those neat translator pins which made life for the fledging multinational organization a lot easier. Not to mention the fun of watching Giles spend an entire afternoon apologizing to Chao-Ahn. They also got some communications equipment that made it possible to locate and talk to their people anywhere on Earth, in addition to allowing them to tap into any police and military communications.

Plus Faith got to kick some serious alien ass.

In fact, Faith had been tempted to put this whole thing down as a plus except for one little detail.

Since she was still a wanted felon back on Earth Faith had agreed to stay and help rebuild the Starfighter Corp. She figured it couldn't be any worse than babysitting the mini-Slayers. That was until Buffy had agreed to let Andrew stay as her liaison to Earth.

Bad enough he was in space surrounded by aliens, which sent him into some kind of geek nirvana. But the whole incident had revealed that Faith liked video games. Which meant Andrew figured he now had something in common with Faith. So dork-boy, who Faith had previously managed to keep at arms length, now took every opportunity to try and talk with her about strategy, graphics, controls and any other subject that popped into his head.

Faith couldn't figure out any way to stop him short of killing him. It was 50-50 whether the Scoobies would let that pass. Even Giles had nearly been driven to violence when Andrew had once taken it upon himself to reorganize the Council's demon database. He reclassified all the demons by how closely their powers and abilities corresponded to various characters from the X-Men comics. It took Dawn and Giles over a week to get everything fixed.

So upside, kicked alien ass, helped the Council get some seriously cool toys to play with and found new job where there was no chance of being arrested.

Downside, hanging out with Andrew.

Stupid vices.


End file.
